


Let's Remix This Business

by Frea_O



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Celebrities, F/M, Falling in Love on YouTube, Rock Stars, Social Media, Social Networking, Songwriting, YouTube
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 16:32:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1311622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frea_O/pseuds/Frea_O
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity is classically-trained and spends her days coming up with <i>a capella</i> arrangements and remixes. Oliver is the lead singer of Arrow, the hottest new rock and roll band.</p><p>Or really, he was a boy. She was a girl. Can I make it any more obvious?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let's Remix This Business

**Author's Note:**

> This was a series of interconnected stories set in the same universe that I put on Tumblr. Enjoy!

[](http://i.imgur.com/4I8h8zD.jpg)

**McAbsALot**

You’d think when your best friend is the daughter of the woman you grew up idolizing, the woman who made you pick up a guitar in the first place and probably shaped your entire life, you would actually be good at meeting celebrities.

This is clearly not the case for Felicity Smoak.

“You called him _what_?” Laurel asks as she passes the basket of deep-fried mushrooms across the table.

Felicity puts her head on her arms. “I don’t want to have to repeat myself. Please don’t make me repeat myself.”

Sara snatches the basket from her sister and pops two in her mouth. She’s always had a metabolism that makes Felicity outright furious. “It was beautiful, Laur, just absolutely beautiful. And Ollie’s face—”

“This is your fault,” Felicity tells her best friend and producing partner, lifting her head half an inch. “A little warning might have been nice. Or _essential_.”

“Aw.” Sara slings an arm around her. “He thought it was cute. It takes a lot to make Ollie smile.”

“It really does,” Laurel says, and Felicity figures she _has_ to be telling the truth because if there’s one person who knows Oliver Queen better than his family or his band, it’s the woman who helped him launch his entire career. The daughter of Dinah and the son of Bob Queen, doing duets together in shopping malls across America. “Though it’s really not fair you didn’t warn her, Sara.”

“Or at least record the babbling when it happened,” Sin, Sara’s little camera apprentice, pipes up from Sara’s other side. “Man, I’m sorry to have missed that.”

“You’re all the worst,” Felicity says. “The worst. Every single one of you. It shouldn’t be possible because superlative, but you all individually make it work.”

Sin nudges past Sara to load up a chip with guac. Girls’ nights kind of became a thing after Laurel moved back to Starling City to represent them—“You may be an online thing, but you need legal protection, Sara, and you may be all buff from carrying around cameras, but protecting you is my job. Literally in this case.”—along with her other clients, and the waitstaff at the Foundry know all of them well by this point. Sometimes Sara’s girlfriend joins them, but usually it’s just the three or four of them. The rules are that they’re allowed to eat whatever they want and nobody’s allowed to complain about weight, body image, or anything “whiny.”

“So, Sara,” Sin says. “Any other Felicity bombs you want to tell us about?”

“Oh, hey.” Sara sits up. “He came. I can’t believe it.”

“Who came?” Felicity asks, lifting her head fully. Even if Sara’s evil grin weren’t all the clue she needs, she doesn’t need any of them to actually answer because there, moving through the Foundry with all of the ease and grace of a frickin’ rockstar is Oliver Queen. Felicity swivels on her Judas Iscariot with a look of outrage. “You invited him?”

“’Course I did. Invited the whole band, actually, but it looks like Ollie is flying solo. Good for us.”

Oliver reaches their table and the grin he flashes all of them is mesmerizing. Sara actually climbs over Felicity to give him a hug. “You made it!” she says. “Rules are no complaining about how many calories you’re eating, if you bring up Nickleback the next round’s on you, and failure to join in mandatory karaoke will get you banned from Foundry Fridays.”

“Hello to you, too.” Oliver has a nice laugh. He hugs her back, and then Laurel, and introductions are made for Sin, who had to miss the surprise production meeting at the SC studio earlier. When he turns toward Felicity, everything gets a little surreal because he grins at her like she’s not an idiot with a mouth faster than her brain. “Felicity, hey.”

It’s impossible to die of embarrassment, right? Physically impossible? Because right now it doesn’t feel impossible. “Oliver, hey,” she says, her voice a little weak.

Instead of scooting her over, Sara takes that moment to climb back over Felicity, leaving the only empty seat beside her. Oliver slides into that easily and she smells sawdust and aftershave. She is going to murder Sara later, she decides. It’ll be different running the Smoaking Canary channel without her, but Felicity’s smart. She went to Julliard. She can make this work.

“Oh, it’s Oliver now? I thought it was McAbsALot,” he says.

“In my defense, whoever shot ‘Evil Cupid’ had a really strange fascination with your abs and I have seen that video like…” Felicity’s brain thankfully catches her before she can tell the truth. “…two times. So. It’s flattering, right? I’d be flattered if somebody called me that. Somebody please agree with me that it’s flattering.”

Sara laughs and pats her shoulder. “You missed it, Ollie,” she says. “We were just teasing Felicity about your new nickname.”

“It’s a great nickname. I may never wear a shirt again,” Oliver says.

“Well, there’s an idea for the video we’re making for Arrow,” Sara says, and Felicity chokes on her drink because composing one of Arrow’s old songs for a capella—and teaching the band how to sing a capella style—is going to be hard enough, but if they’re all shirtless?

Somebody should just kill her now.

* * *

**Julliard Duel**

Felicity knows it’s an indulgence—she has way too much to do, there are a few replies Sara earmarked for her to handle, Sara wants her to take a look at the edits for the brigade mix, there’s a problematic note in the bass line in the Heroes for a Day arrangement that needs a little finagling—but Felicity shoves away from the computer anyway and goes to the wall. She runs her fingers down Betty’s side, enjoying how worn the guitar feels. She bought a fancier one with the proceeds of their first YouTube video, of course, something she’s always wanted, but Betty’s been with her through years and years of heartbreak and hard work. She genuinely loves Sara and now even all of the Lances, who have adopted her, and it’s silly, but nothing will ever really match up to the love she has for her guitar.

“Screw it,” she says and, rolling her shoulders, she drags out one of the stools, grabs Betty, and sits down. A couple of chords to warm up her fingers, a pause to tune the E string, and she starts to play.

She could probably play _The Clock Tower_ in her sleep. Even before she started a YouTube channel with Dinah Lance’s daughter, the Birds of Prey have always been her jam. She wore out their greatest hits CD in her Sony Discman. So she starts to play the familiar chords, humming along at first and then singing when the words get too much for her. She improvises half of the chords and adjusts the tempo, fingers flying along the frets as she lets the music speak to her.

Music’s always been the thing that makes sense. Mathematics and beauty.

She’s halfway through the third verse—her favorite—when she _senses_ that she’s not alone. Her shoulder blades bunch together and she flubs a chord when she looks up to see Oliver in the doorway, leaning casually against the doorjamb. Does the man own anything but ratty Rolling Stone T-shirts? Not that he doesn’t look amazing in them—he does—but it’s the principle of the thing.

He raises an eyebrow at her and gestures for her to keep playing and if it were any other song, she wouldn’t listen. But it’s _The Clock Tower_ , so she sighs and keeps going. She even plays Helena Wayne’s special little slide at the end that only a few guitarists in the world can get right, and it’s such a point of pride that she raises her chin.

“Nice,” Oliver says, finally speaking when the chords have died down.

Felicity grabs the guitar by the neck, leaning her forehead against her hand. Of course, Oliver Queen, rock star, would be the one to sneak into her studio and catch her playing 70s glam rock. “Usually when people catch me doing that, they jump in and try to harmonize,” she says.

Oliver smiles and tilts his head a little. “I was enjoying your voice too much. I don’t see you with that much.”

“My first.” She pats the guitar and then abruptly goes red. “Guitar, that is! Not first like that. Ugh. Whatever. I was classically trained and—you know, you had to keep up with instruments at Julliard.”

“Julliard, huh?” He grabs a stool from the pile in the corner and drags it over. “Wow, I don’t know if I’m worthy of your presence. I got kicked out of four schools myself.”

“I know. I’ve read your Wiki,” Felicity said, and winces again. “I mean—”

“You mind?” Oliver gestures at one of the guitars on the wall.

“What? Oh, sure. I can—” She starts to put Betty down, but Oliver waves absently at her and plucks Burt from the wall, testing the strings. He seems to nod approvingly, and she doesn’t have the heart to tell him she tunes all of them every morning. It’s her way of clearing her head. “You like?”

“Very nice,” he says, and taking a seat, he plucks out a blues scale. She raises an eyebrow, more at seeing him with a guitar than at the fact that saliva is pooling up in her mouth a little. He’s usually focused more on vocals, but oh god, sleep rumpled and stubbly like that and holding a guitar? Come to mama. She quickly looks down to get a grip on herself while Oliver speeds up the scale. And it all goes to pot when he raises his head slightly to meet her eye. “Well?”

“What? Huh?” She’s pretty sure she sounds like one of his groupies right now. How does the man just _exude sex_ like that?

“You ready to duel, Julliard? That is one of the things you fancy classically trained kids used to do, right?”

“You challenging me to a battle, Queen?” Inspired by his shirt, she speeds up the opening riff to Jumping Jack Flash and raises an eyebrow.

He grins. “Oh, it is on.”

* * *

**Skype Call**

“Oh, hey, you’re getting a Skype call.”

Felicity’s in her closet, more concerned about which dress she wants to wear for the event later. Barry’s hosting several YouTube celebrities for a hang-out session on his channel to raise money for his charity marathon team. And even though she’s the last person who should actually be appearing in YouTube videos, the Behind the Scenes Arrow shoot Sara threw on their channel garnered so many hits that Felicity has to go to more and more of these events. “Just ignore it,” she says. “I can call whoever it is back later. I don’t have time at the moment.”

“Okay.” She hears the clatter of keyboard keys.

“You’re not messing with my settings again, are you?”

“Nope,” Sara says.

“Good because I’ll change all of your sequence settings to SD again if you do.” Felicity grabs two dresses and emerges, holding the green dress in front of her. “Also, which one of these is—oh, good god.”

“Felicity, hi!” Oliver’s face fills most of the screen. She can see the other members of Arrow crowded around him—Roy has his red hoodie pulled up, Diggle’s grinning and pushing the drummer out of the way—but she’s more concerned about the fact that they’re on the computer and she’s in her underwear.

“Uh, hi,” she says, keeping the dress in front of her. She glares daggers at Sara. “I am pretty sure if I were to murder you right now, I’d be acquitted.”

Sara shrugs, unrepentant. “He looked really sad on Skype. They all did. What was I supposed to do, not accept the call?”

“I hate you.”

“Felicity!” Roy’s eyebrows go up. “Nice undies.”

Oliver and Diggle exchange look and without a single word spoken, Diggle grabs the drummer by the scruff of the neck and drags him off.

“I’d go with the purple one,” Oliver says, nodding at the dresses. He’s got a huge grin on his face.

“Seriously, no judge would blame me for murdering you into tiny little pieces,” Felicity tells Sara, who’s grinning even harder than Oliver is. “Just a sec, Oliver.”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to get dressed on my account.”

“Ha,” Felicity says. “Ha. Ha. Ha.” She dives back into her closet and grabs her bathrobe, contemplating the many ways in which she could get away with Sara’s murder. She’s smart. They wouldn’t even suspect her. She clinches the tie around her waist and emerges, wondering if she’s as bright red as she feels. “Oliver, how good are you at carrying dead bodies?”

“You’d miss me too much,” Sara says. “I’ll give you a moment.”

She scampers away, conveniently staying out of range. With a sigh, Felicity takes the seat at the computer and hides her face behind her hands for a moment. Then she gives Oliver a determinedly bright smile. “How’s Coast City?”

“Boring. You and Sara should catch a flight, come film our show or something as an excuse.” Oliver perks up for a second. “I’ll take my shirt off onstage for you. Been blasting the abs workouts lately.”

Felicity laughs and shakes her head at him. “Nobody is ever going to let me live that down.”

“You don’t like my abs?”

“Oh, I do. I mean, um, they’re fine. They’re great, even, and—” Yeah, she’d really, really like to lick them, but she’s not admitting that over a Skype call when he just saw her in her underwear because her best friend is a dirty, rotten traitor who seems to have gotten it into her head that Oliver had a giant crush on her. “But unfortunately, I can’t get away. Barry’s doing a hang-out on his channel to raise money for charity and I promised to be there.”

“Barry? Wait, the skinny kid, looks like a toothpick? Pretends he can sing in something other than a falsetto?”

“He…usually goes by Flash and I don’t think any of that is true. Why are you frowning?”

“I’m not frowning.” Oliver plasters on a fake smile. He always keeps his face a little too close to the screen so he looks out of focus. He’ll never be meant for YouTube stardom, Felicity thinks. “See? Are you and Sara doing a project with him?”

“No, I’m just helping a friend out. He’s running a marathon.”

“Can’t you help a friend out in Coast City? We’re staying at a really cool hotel, they’ve got a duck pond inside the building, and there’s this really great restaurant Thea found, you’d like it.”

“I wish. I really would love that and Sara would, too, provided I let her live, but after this meet-up, I have a deadline on some projects and we’re meeting with a web designer because a DDOS attack killed the Smoaking Canary page last week. It’s a nightmare.” Felicity massages her temples.

“You can skip all that. Come to Coast City, I’ll give you a neck rub.”

“That sounds amazing, it really does.”

From Felicity’s kitchen, she can hear Sara’s groan. “Oliver!” her friend calls. “She’s not getting it. Just ask her out already!”

“I will find somewhere murder is legal!” Felicity calls back, and then it strikes her: “Wait, what? Ask me out?”

When she turns back to the computer, Oliver has his teeth clenched together. “Your partner is a pain in the ass,” he says.

“You think? What is she talking about, asking me out? I thought you wanted us to come film your show.”

Oliver pinches the bridge of his nose for a second. “That was an excuse. Really, I was just trying to get you to come out here because this tour is never-ending and we’re still six weeks from being back in Starling City.” He takes a deep breath. “And hey, I miss seeing you on anything more than Skype.”

Felicity squeaks.

“Diggle has sworn to kill me if I write a song for you,” Oliver goes on, looking sheepish. “So I can’t do that, but I can beg you to come out to Coast City. Please?”

“You’re serious right now? This isn’t because you just saw me in my panda underwear?”

“It’s really cute, but no. Please?” He tries for his most charming grin and she knows he calls it that because he told her between takes in the studio. Diggle and Sara had been goofing off with a fake arm wrestling contest that had turned into a real arm wrestling contest, but Oliver hadn’t even glanced at them. The way he’d been looking at Felicity, she kind of felt like he didn’t even realize there was anybody in the room with them.

And now it turns out he may not have been using the rockstar smolder on her. Her heart starts thumping. She taps her the beat to Mozart’s piano concerto number twenty one, a nervous habit. Every instinct is telling her to just go straight to the airport.

But unfortunately, she promised. “I can’t,” she says, and Oliver’s face falls. “I really can’t miss this. It’s for a good cause.”

“I’ll triple whatever donations they receive.”

“And I gave my word, but…” Felicity’s heart leaps into her throat as she pulls up a browser on her other screen and checks the Arrow official website. “But…I can be in Gotham next weekend.”

“Yes!” Oliver actually fist-pumps and then she blinks because everything goes wobbly and blurry. There’s a cracking noise from the other end of the call, followed by Oliver muttering, “Shit!”

“Oliver?” Felicity asks. “What just happened?”

“Shit, shit, just—uh, dropped my phone. It’s okay. It’s only a little cracked. Aw, man, I just got this. But I heard you right? Gotham next weekend?” There’s some disorienting footage of the ceiling and lights streaking by and then Oliver’s face fills the screen. He’s wearing the biggest grin she’s ever seen, and it makes her heart flop around in her chest. She’s pretty sure she’s grinning like an idiot, too.

“Yes, next weekend,” she says. “I’ll book a hotel—”

“No, no, don’t worry about that, I’ll have Thea take care of that, she can get you in the same place where we’re staying.” Oliver’s face flickers in and out and he curses again. “Crap, I think I may have killed my phone. I’d better go.”

“Wait!” Felicity says before she can really think it through. “Why aren’t you allowed to write a song about me? I mean, not that you would, I’m not a narcissist that needs a song about me, but why—”

“Diggle calls it the Queen curse. Every time I write a song about a girl, it ends badly.”

“Right, maybe don’t write a song about me, then.”

Oliver’s grin fills the entire screen. “Never. Bye, Felicity.”

“Bye,” Felicity says, but the call cuts out before he hears that.

She collapses against the back of her chair, letting out a long, disbelieving breath with her heart still pounding and the idiotic grin still on her face. She’s had a few—or a lot—of dreams about Oliver lately and they’ve sent each other some really funny text-messages (he sometimes shows up in the comments on her videos, which makes her fans scream because OLIVER QUEEN! ROCKSTAR! IN THE COMMENTS!), but she had _no idea_ he felt that way. And now she’s going to be a gibbering mess for the rest of the day in Barry’s hangout and she doesn’t care because next weekend, she is going to Gotham to see him.

“Well, well, well,” Sara says from the doorway. She looks incredibly smug. “Did I call it or did I call it?”

“You called it.” Felicity pushes the chair away from the desk and cracks her knuckles. That flash of sheer mortification has not been forgotten. “Now, about that murder…”

Sara looks at her best friend’s face for a long second and then she does what any wise woman would do in that situation: she takes off running.

* * *

**Landing the Birds of Prey**

“Felicity. Felicity. Felicity. _Lissssity_ , wake up, wake up, wake up.”

Felicity feels the mattress shift as somebody jumps into bed with her. She rolls over and sticks her head under the pillow. “This isn’t real. This is not happening on the night I’m finally getting to sleep for the first time in the years since I started the Smoakin’ Mix 2014,” she says.

Sara yanks the pillow away from her. “You’re trying to ignore me.”

“Gee, you think? Why are you here? Why did I give you a key? Why do you hate me?”

“Because. Wake up.”

“Sara, I love you, I really do, but _go away_.”

“No. I’m going to sit on you until you wake up.”

Felicity grunts when Sara sticks by her word, plopping down on her stomach. Annoyingly, the cinematographer starts to sing the cups song from _Pitch Perfect_ and it’s really kind of a pain in the ass, especially when she starts pounding on the mattress in time to the beat. Sara has a great voice. She and Laurel could’ve easily become a sister duo and taken over the pop charts. If Felicity didn’t love her best friend and producing partner so much, she’d hate her for a sheer excess of talent.

Sara regularly says the same thing about her. So in addition to talented, she’s delusional, too.

And annoying as hell. “If this is what having a sister is like, I’m so glad I’m an only child. Okay!” Felicity shoves at Sara, who easily rolls onto the other, empty side of Felicity’s bed and stretches out. “I’m awake! What do you want!”

Sara props her head up on her elbow. “Knew that would get you.”

Felicity closes her eyes and makes obnoxious snoring noises.

“Fine, fine! But I swear to you, in twenty seconds you’re going to be wide awake and babbling. Actually—make that fifty seconds because before I tell you anything: what’s with the roses?”

“What roses?”

“Duh, Smoak, the entire rose garden on your counter. Who bought you a florist shop?”

Oh, right, those roses. “Who do you think?” Felicity asks.

“Ha! I knew it! I told him you liked the pink ones the best, which must be why they’re all yellow. Always zigs when you expect him to zag, that guy. What does he want?”

“He wants us to go to the Arrow concert in Central City,” Felicity says.

Sara punches the air. “Yes! What’d you say?”

“I told him you were dying of swine flu and I’m sorry to miss the concert, but I’m going to have to stick by your bedside and make a remix of your dying words, which will be ‘I’m sorry for waking you up when you haven’t slept in three days, Felicity.’ Super tragic.” Felicity closes her eyes again, mostly because the bed is shaking with Sara’s laughter. Her friend is weird, and possibly a little drunk and while it’s nice to see her this way and not pensive or introspective, Felicity just wants to get some damned sleep. “Maybe I’ll use the instrumentals from ‘Sweet Dreams.’”

“Ugh, Eurythmics. Worst. But I’ll forgive you for that appalling lack of taste because guess who I ate dinner with tonight, huh? Guess, guess, guess.”

“The Queen of England.”

“Close. My mom.”

“Oh, that’s nice.” Felicity snuggles deeper into her covers. She can doze and make vague answers at the same time. She’s survived so many random producers’ meetings that way. “How is she?”

“She’s great. And so are Helena and Babs. They say hi.”

“Also nice.”

“And they want to do it.”

Felicity’s doze abruptly ends. She cracks open one eye to find that Sara has somehow wiggled closer and is _grinning_ at her, eyes shining in the darkness. “They want to do what?”

“I told them, you psycho fiend. All about that a capella remix you composed of _Clock Tower_ and Babs got really excited. Mom knows you so she vouched for you, and Helena’s willing to come out of retirement for this and a couple of jam sessions in our studio.”

Felicity shoots up, getting tangled in the covers and staring at her best friend in absolute shock. “What?”

“Full access Birds of Prey,” Sara says, and Felicity starts hyperventilating because _what_. “They want to use the material on an album so Laurel’s gonna have to work overtime, but it’s ours, ’Lissity. It’s ours.”

“Oh my god!” She can’t breathe. It’s like the time she finally gave in and accepted the tickets from Oliver and he spotted her in the audience and winked at her as he started singing _Evil Cupid_ , but ten thousand times worse because the Birds of Prey are going to sing something _she_ composed. She practically leaps at Sara, who laughs and hugs her back even though it’s kind of awkward because Felicity’s still tangled up in the sheets. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. This isn’t happening!”

Sara gives her a big smacking kiss on the side of the head. “Totally happening. Mom’s pumped. They’re coming to the studio on Tuesday.”

“Oh god, we have to clean the place up, and that poster, you know the one, that has to go, and oh my god.”

“Nope, Mom’s orders. We are not allowed to change a single thing. We’re also not allowed to freak out.”

“Too late!”

“Well, yeah. You got any champagne?”

“I think Oliver sent a bottle over with the forest of roses. I’ve been kind of in mix-haze lately and I haven’t emerged from it and—oh my god!”

“I’ll get the champagne. You stay here and try to breathe.” Sara laughs and pushes herself out of the bed, finally kicking off her heels. In the doorway, she pauses. “Oh, right, one more thing. And, um, don’t panic but…”

Immediately, Felicity’s eyes go wide. “What is it?”

Sara winces. “Mom wants Laurel and me on back-up vocals.”

“Why would I panic about that? You’re both great singers. Fantastic even.” Felicity’s hands are shaking, she realizes. She shoves the covers off of her finally and jumps out of bed, heading for Sara. “This is so great, I can adapt the three-part background harmony for two, it’s no problem.”

“No need to do that.”

“What?”

“Well, uh, Babs and Helena, they never had kids and Mom’s just got Laurel and me, you know? So she wants you to take the third part since you’re an honorary Lance daughter at this point anyway. Kind of a two-generational thing.”

Felicity blinks at her friend for a long moment before it fully hits her: Dinah Lance and the Birds of Prey want her to sing back-up vocals for them on her own arrangement of their hit song.

In the end, she’s really lucky Sara’s so talented and fast on her feet because it saves her from getting a goose-egg from passing out.

* * *

**Duet**

Felicity tunes her guitar with a scowl. “I hope your band knows you’re cheating on them with me,” she says.

The intercom she and Sara installed after they’d made enough to pay off the mortgage on the studio crackles to life. “Uh, we’re right here, in the booth.” Roy’s voice fills the room. “So we can hear everything you say. Because you have microphones. It’s literally our job to hear everything you say right now.”

“Shut up, Roy,” Oliver and Felicity say together.

Sin, who’s setting up her beloved Nikon, snorts but mercifully doesn’t laugh.

Oliver, meanwhile, flashes that million dollar grin that magazine covers and photographers don’t see much because they enjoy the sober, serious side of the rockstar. “You told me your subscriptions tripled after I randomly wandered through that Mal-Kim video you guys filmed. And the red carpet pictures.”

“Hey, some of those subscriptions were thanks to our Birds of Prey unlimited run,” Felicity says, but she can’t deny it. Half of the comments on new videos beg for Arrow members to show up, for more Oliver Queen, and it’s both a little disconcerting and a little thrilling. “Besides, didn’t the press complain about those pictures? You didn’t look at the cameras for any of them. You were too busy smiling at me. Like a doofus.”

“An incredibly hot doofus,” Oliver says.

The intercom crackles again. “You two are sickening,” Diggle feels the need to point out.

Oliver makes a rude gesture toward the booth. Felicity can see Sara practically losing it. 

“We’re giving your fans what they want,” Oliver says. “They want more of me and they definitely want more of you. So...Olicity unplugged.”

“Olicity?” Felicity asks. “It’s my channel. It should be Feliver.”

“Not as charming.” They both finish tuning their guitars as Sin gives the thumbs up on that camera and heads to the switchboard. It’s not a live performance—Sara wants some time to edit the streams together—but they don’t have much time. “But let’s give the people what they want, which is you and me, singing together. I’ll even promise to look lovingly at you the whole time.”

“You were planning to do that from the start,” Sara points out. “But yes, do that. It’ll get us more hits.”

“When did we become clickbait junkies?” Felicity asks.

“Right around the time you started dating Oliver Queen. Ready to go?”

“I still think you’re cheating on your band,” Felicity tells Oliver and he grins, leaning over to give her a quick kiss before they start playing a slower, acoustic version of _Your Heart is a Resting Place,_ which she knows for a fact is not about her.

Felicity is 100% not surprised that the kiss makes it into the final footage. She’s even less surprised when it shows up all over Tumblr the next day.

But _Your Heart is a Resting Place_ goes on to have several million more hits than anything else on the channel and Felicity can’t deny that her heart jumps a little every time she hears their voices in perfect harmony like that.

* * *

**Starling City Magazine Profile – Arrow's Lead Singer: The Queen in Love With a YouTube Princess**

**Starling City Magazine** : So it was Merlyn’s decision for you to resume your career?

 **Oliver Queen** : No, not at all, actually. I can’t speak for him but I think after the scare, he was done with all of it. And when it happened…I went to a really dark place. A sort of purgatory, if you will, where I basically shut myself away from the world for months. I barely ate, I didn’t touch my guitar or look at a single sheet of music. It was like I was gone completely.

 **SCM** : So what changed?

 **OQ** : My sister [Thea Queen, manager of Arrow since 2012 - _SCM_ ] dragged me outside one day and told me something I really needed to hear at the time.

 **SCM** : And what was that?

[Queen fidgets, uncomfortable with this line of questioning, and this reporter begins to have second thoughts. But he takes a deep breath and plows on, ever the stalwart rock and roll legend we’ve come to expect from the lead singer of Arrow.]

 **OQ** : That it wasn’t my fault. And it took her a little while because my skull can be kind of thick sometimes—quit laughing, Thea, I know you are—but she was right. Tommy’s choices were all about him and I’m glad he’s getting the treatment he needs, even if I miss him. Anyway, I got in touch with an old friend of mine and we found a drummer, Thea made us put together a demo, and here we are.

 **SCM** : Now to switch topics entirely, let’s talk a little bit about your love life instead.

 **OQ** : Oh, if we have to.

[He’s smiling.]

 **SCM** : Eight months ago, you started making your way over to a new medium.

 **OQ** : Is this your way of saying I’ve been showing up in a lot of YouTube videos lately? It’s very subtle. I can’t tell.

 **SCM** : [laughing] Busted. But you have been. And now you’re publicly dating Felicity Smoak, co-creator of the popular YouTube channel TheSmoakingCanary.

 **OQ** : I am indeed.

 **SCM** : How’s that going? The comments sections of her videos have been inundated with requests for you to appear in more videos, I noticed.

 **OQ** : They have been. I’m actually a little frustrated sometimes because Felicity and Sara [Lance, co-producer of TheSmoakingCanary], they make these really, really great videos. They’re both such wonderful creators, too, their brains operate on a whole new level and the music videos, the remixes and the jam sessions they put on that channel, they’re just…they’re so great.

 **SCM** : But you’re not biased at all.

 **OQ** : Oh, I’m totally biased. Have you seen Felicity? She’s incredible. Sara’s awesome, too, I don’t want to forget her. But yes, sometimes I get annoyed that it seems like every comment they get is about Arrow or about how Felicity and I are together, and they _should_ be commenting on the great stuff that Felicity and Sara are doing. They’re visionaries.

 **SCM** : So biased.

 **OQ** : And unashamed of it.

 **SCM** : Got any juicy stories you want to share about the ladies of The SmoakingCanary?

 **OQ** : Here’s one that’s going to make Felicity groan. See this?

[Queen pulls an old iPhone with a shattered screen from his pocket. It looks vaguely like an elephant has learned to rumba on top of it.]

 **OQ** : This is the phone I used to ask her out the first time.

 **SCM** : She didn’t get angry and throw it at you, did she?

 **OQ** : Haha, nope. Skype call, I was safe from projectiles. I asked her to come visit me while I was on tour, and she said yes—which I did not expect—and whoops, dropped the phone. I keep it with me now because, well, I think it’s fun to torment her. She gets so embarrassed when I tell this story.

 **SCM** : As you have to all of our readers, just now.

 **OQ** : Yup. That was the plan.

 **SCM** : Speaking of Miss Smoak, do you the two of you have any future projects in mind for the channel?

 **OQ** : She’ll kill me if I tell you. But stick around. I can promise you fireworks.

* * *

**Onstage**

Felicity catches the look on Oliver's face right before he bounds across the stage, heading for the wings and subsequently for her. “No,” she says, shaking her head before he’s even there. “No, no, no, no.”

This is why she started a YouTube channel instead of going out and singing in clubs and trying to get discovered. She does not enjoy live performance, not the way Oliver does, when he comes back to their hotel rooms still smelling like the stage and the makeup they sometimes force on him, juiced up on his own adrenaline from performing in front of thousands. She could think of worse nightmares she’s had, but they're few and far between.

But he ignores her frantically shaking her head and scoops her up like a sack of potatoes. He carts her out on stage. “Ladies and gentlemen! Miss Felicity Smoak!” Diggle says into the microphone and fans go  _nuts_ the way they always do.

“I am not having sex with you for like a week,” Felicity says as Oliver sets her on her feet. She feels nauseated as she waves at the audience.

And then Thea the traitor brings out Burt, who’s all hooked up to the soundsystems, and Felicity realizes  _they planned this, the stinkers, I should have stayed home in bed with mint-chip._

“A whole week?” Oliver says, and his pout is impressive.

She glares as she accepts the guitar from Thea. “Maybe two.”

“Bet I can talk you out of that,” Oliver says, grinning.

“Ew,” Thea feels the need to inform both of them before she scampers off, likely to escape Felicity’s wrath.

She sighs and waves at the audience again, hand resting on her guitar. Again, they go completely bonkers. “We’re playing the song again, aren’t we?”

“Yup,” Oliver says, pulling her up to the conveniently placed microphones at the front of the stage right as Diggle starts playing the opening notes of  _Your Heart is a Resting Place_.

In the end, it turns out she’s a liar. Oliver’s apology after the show is so convincing that they desecrate the green room, much to Roy’s disgust.

* * *

**Q &A**

“How’s my make-up look?” Felicity asks as Sin finishes setting up the lights for the live chat. They’ve advertised for it on the channel for a few weeks and Felicity is kind of dreading it, to be honest; in the Q&As she normally does with Sara, there is at least a chance to edit out some of the babbling, but this Hangout is live and will be stored on their channel and she has a feeling she is about to be immortalized yet again for something babbly, filled with innuendo, and inappropriate.

At least everybody in her life finds it amusing. Felicity might not agree with them, but there is always that.

“Looks good, slugger,” Sara says, though she reaches out and uses her thumb to wipe away a smudge on Felicity’s face. “Now you look better.”

“Did we ever have any concept of personal space or was that doomed from the start?” Felicity wonders.

Sara, as ever, picks up the direction of her thoughts. “We’ve come a long way from that crappy place in Williamsburg,” she says. “Do you remember that place? I’ve never been so happy to have consistently running water—”

“ _Clear_ water.”

“—when we started crashing illegally in our studio.”

“Good times,” Felicity says with a sigh and Sin adjusts the light. Felicity turns to face the screen. “How do we look, Laurel?”

Sara’s sister looks up from her magazine and squints at them. That’s one thing Felicity likes about Laurel: she will always tell the truth, even if it’s sometimes painful. But the brunette nods. “Blonde. Very blonde, both of you.”

“Ha, ha,” Sara says. “But are we passable?”

“Oh, I suppose. I’ll sit in on the actual Hangout. At least, until Tommy gets here. We’re heading out to the lake house.”

“Oooh,” Sara says, drawing the word out in the most immature way possible. Tommy Merlyn’s stint in rehab has done him wonders, but in Felicity’s opinion, it’s even better for Oliver. In their first few months of dating, she’d noticed that sometimes a deep sadness settled over Oliver’s features, a sadness that she couldn’t hope to break through. It can’t be easy to find your best friend on the floor of your bathroom, doing his best to overdose on pills. But Tommy’s back and doing better and he and Oliver have worked things out, so Felicity hopes it’s only blue skies ahead for all of them.

She doubts it. Life isn’t that kind, but right now, she’s happy.

“You’re twelve,” Laurel informs Sara.

“That’s pretty generous,” Felicity says, and she laughs as she dodges the elbow from Sara. “The light’s pretty good, I think, Sin. What do you think?”

Their assistant tweaks it one more time. “There,” she says. “Now I can let you run around online like barbarians.” She heads for the kitchen island, where there are donuts, orange juice, and fruit laid out.

“Sin loves these little chats of ours,” Sara says, reaching around Felicity to activate all of the controls they need. “Oh, hey, check out how many people there are in here. We’re a couple of popular bitches.”

“Eep,” Felicity says.

“If you throw up, do it that way and not on me.” And with that cheerful warning, Sara hits activate and the chat starts for real. They’ve hosted quite a few of these, so they have a format, but every time it’s something new. They have to pause to let Felicity fix a technical error and then Sin’s light blows out and Sara does something magical with the feed to change the lighting on their faces. Today’s chat is more focused on Sara side of the channel with the video editing and camerawork, so Felicity actually gets to take kind of a backseat.

She still gets so absorbed in the chat that it takes her a few seconds to notice that there are a lot of ‘ADFKLSJREAKLE’ and ‘!!!!!’ messages scrolling in the chatroom. She blinks, worried that they’ve somehow gone offline, and then it occurs to her to turn around.

Oliver is standing behind them at the fridge, drinking orange juice straight from the bottle and wearing nothing but pajama pants because of course he is.

She doesn’t facepalm. Instead, she starts laughing. “As you can see, we’re at my apartment,” she says, “and yes, my boyfriend slept over last night. I’m not even going to try to pretend that he just stopped by because he wants to contaminate the orange juice or, uh, anything else and oh god—”

“Oh, hey.” Oliver is obviously pretending to notice the chat room for the first time. He ambles over with a sleepy grin on his face and leans over Sara and Felicity, delightfully bare-chested. “Hey, Smoaking Canary fans. How’s it going?”

Obviously, the chat room explodes.

“Okay, you should probably go now before everybody has a meltdown,” Felicity says, but Oliver just grins and kisses her.

Sara’s the one that has to laughingly shove him away. The jerk, however, heads straight for the kitchen, where he spends the next twenty minutes of their chat—which is the Q&A portion, really—cooking pancakes and eggs in the background. Felicity is pretty sure absolutely nobody is paying attention to what she and Sara are saying, and honestly, with the way Oliver looks, she’s okay with that.

They open up the floor to questions from the chat room, half of which they have to call to Oliver, who does a pretty good show of being surprised that anybody would want to pay attention to him. Felicity manages to drop a spectacular piece of innuendo about Oliver’s ass that has him on clutching the counter and laughing (and Sin and Sara both rubbing their hands over their faces and smiling because they can’t help it), half of the chat room tries to hit on Oliver, the other half tries to hit on Sara and Felicity, and overall, Sara claims it’s pretty much a success.

“Any last questions? I think we’ve got about ten minutes left,” Felicity says.

“Actually.” Oliver appears behind her. “Sorry, guys, chat’s getting a little too long, and Felicity’s breakfast is ready.”

“Oliver, we’ve got ten more minutes—”

“Sorry, nope, that’s a filthy lie,” Oliver says. He drops a kiss on top of her head. “I’m calling boyfriend privileges, Smoaking Canary fans. You’ve had her long enough.” And while Felicity sputters at him, wondering exactly what’s gotten into him, he scoops her up and out of the chair. She swears she can hear like seven hundred keyboards being smashed. “Sara, I assume you’ve got this from here?”

Sara’s laughing like the backstabber she is. “Got it, Ollie. Save me some pancakes.”

“Bye,” Felicity manages to tell the chatroom before Oliver carts her away. The second they’re out of range of the camera, he drops her on her feet, and she hauls him out of hearing distance. “Was that really necessary?”

“Nope. Fun? Yes.” He grabs her by the waist, thumbs creeping up under her shirt as he kisses her. “Plus, your fans are gonna remember that one for awhile. I was just helping you out.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

“And I have pancakes. Don’t think I missed your stomach growling awhile back.”

“You’re lucky I love you so much,” Felicity says, laughing as he drags her to the kitchen table, where he’s made a feast.

He has a point, though. The view counts for the Q&A video nearly top their most viewed video, which remains their duet of _Your Heart is a Resting Place_. Nothing, Felicity figures, will top that one.

Except Oliver himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, right, I made an ebook version of this with a cover and everything, available [here on my blog](http://castleinanity.blogspot.com/p/ebooks.html#remix) (mobi, epub, pdf).


End file.
